One-Click Buy: April Harlequin Blaze Page 7

  Her object of lust leaned against the Caddy, all laconic ease as he watched Carmen.

  Then one of his friends—the guy she’d come to call Roy Rogers—came out of the room with a garbage bag of clothes in hand. He waved at Lucy, looking ashen yet cheery.

  “Yo, Lucky!” he said. “Back to see me?”

  College kids. Oh, how clueless they all were at that time in their lives.

  “Dare to dream,” Lucy answered.

  But Carmen only had eyes for Eddie. “I guess,” she said to him, “we’ll see you on the docks.”

  “You’ve got my number,” he said.

  “Yes, I do.”

  Knowing a good closing when she saw one, Lucy gunned the engine and took off, around the motel and back toward the exit.

  Giving each other conspiratorial grins, they put on their sunglasses and hit the 40, heading for I-95, which veered toward the lake. All the while, Carmen couldn’t wipe her own smile from her face, and Lucy knew exactly how her friend felt.

  Finally.

  But thinking of her night with the cowboy only got her riled up as the wind messed with her ponytailed hair. She kept feeling his hands on her thighs, his mouth kissing her in the most private of places…

  Lucy was lost in hazy near delirium until they got to their exit. Truthfully, she was lucky they didn’t crash into anything.

  But, once on the new highway, Carmen raised her hands in the air, her short hair almost standing on end in the full breeze. “I’m robbing the cradle!”

  They laughed, both of them obviously addicted to what last night had ushered in. Some might define a one-night stand as tawdry—even the old Lucy might have—but now that’d she’d done it, she could only call the experience enlightening.

  And if she could, she would do it again. And again. And…

  They whooshed past cacti and sand, but it all blurred together. She’d gone back to thinking about stubble burn and heavy breathing, reliving every moment, every caress.

  She barely even saw the RVs they were passing or the mileage signs coming and going. It was only when a battered red pickup zoomed by them, then slowed after pulling in front, that Lucy blinked herself out of it.

  Was it the truck from the inn?

  “I think he’s checking you out, Luce,” Carmen said over the wind. “Another cowboy to add to your list?”

  In the truck’s rear window, Lucy saw a weathered hat that resembled the stranger’s, and her belly clutched.

  It was him—she knew it.

  Then the driver sped off until his vehicle became a vanishing pinpoint on the silver ribbon of road.

  She put pedal to the metal, wanting to catch up to the truck, but the car’s temperature gauge began to rise, and she eased off. By that time, the truck was too far gone.

  Something inside Lucy sank. Disappointment. An opportunity to expand her horizons, to put more curves between her and the straight lines she’d always followed.

  But she couldn’t complain this time—it couldn’t have ended more perfectly. She’d done the leaving last night, not him, and it was a beautiful change of pattern. That had to count for something.

  Didn’t it?

  “Well, look who finally arrived,” Carmen said.

  The Ranger and Caddy pulled ahead, their tempered speed slowing Lucy down. That was no doubt a positive thing. And when someone held up a sign in the back window of the Cadillac, Lucy grinned at their antics.

  We’ll Have A Lot More Than Seven Minutes, it said, a simple message that made Carmen look out the passenger window, hiding her expression.

  Then the two vehicles sped ahead, hell-bent for leather.

  Lucy waited for Carmen to remark on the sign, but she didn’t. Instead, the wind continued its tune and they stuck to the speed limit. They were close to the lake anyway.

  When they came upon it, an English village stood guard over the channel’s shore and London Bridge stretched over the early-afternoon water. Lucy had read that the town purchased the structure in an auction during the early seventies, and it was the real deal. Walking its length would be an item to check off a trip to-do list, she thought.

  If she still had one—

  Wait.

  She parked and cut the engine. Why did she need lists? What good did they really do?

  Carmen’s phone rang, and when she answered, it was obvious that Eddie was calling. As they planned to meet, her friend blushed.

  Blushed.

  It was a first, and Lucy wondered just what was going on with Carmen besides all the strangers-make-for-good-sex talk.

  Her friend hung up. “He’s going ahead to see to the houseboat, and the rest of the group is grabbing an early lunch at a microbrewery in the village. Want to go there?”

  “Why not? Carm?”

  “Uh-huh?”

  Lucy wanted to ask a thousand questions, but none of them came easily. Wouldn’t Carmen volunteer to tell her what was on her mind? Lucy shouldn’t have to ask.

  “It’s nothing,” she finally said. Her friend would talk about it if she wanted to. Besides, she hadn’t even told Carmen everything about last night…

  They got out of the car, mild, dry heat enveloping Lucy. The aroma of barbecue traced the air, too, and she stretched, taking in all the boats dotting the water, all the spring-break school kids and families milling about on the walkways. Then they headed toward the Elizabethan English village.

  But something Lucy saw out of the corner of her eye stopped her.

  The red truck from the motel, parked in a sparsely populated area of the lot.

  She looked closer, her pulse quickening. There was a man behind the wheel, his Stetson drawn low over his face.

  Her cowboy.

  As her blood raced, she put her hand on her purse, remembering the money in there.

  “Lucy?” Carmen asked, waiting up ahead.

  He opened the door and climbed out of the truck, and Lucy got a rush so powerful that she couldn’t move.

  “It’s him, Carm,” she said, mouth dry.

  “Him?” Her friend’s voice went high. “Him?”

  “Quiet.” Slowly, Lucy turned to the other woman. “How about I meet you real soon?”

  Carmen hesitated, inspecting Lucy’s object of lust, then raised a cautious finger. “Oh my God, he’s hot. But I’m calling you in a half hour, Luce. You can always use it as an excuse to leave if things get out of control.”

  If only. “Okay.”

  And with that, Lucy gave her friend the please-go-now wide eyes and prepared to approach her cowboy.

  JOSHUA DIDN’T WANT to hide from the brunette now, just as he hadn’t when he’d passed her on the road back yonder.

  So, as she walked across the parking lot, he leaned against the truck, one ankle crossed over the other, his thumbs hitched in the belt loops of his faded jeans. He would take whatever medicine was coming to him.

  When she got near enough for him to read her sunglass-accessorized face, she didn’t look frightened at his presence or even angry. Good. He didn’t want to encourage either emotion but, damn him, he hadn’t been able to help himself by chasing her down. She’d kept him awake all night, that woman, and it’d seemed like good old-fashioned serendipity when he’d stepped out of the motel office this morning to find the taillights of their slick car wheeling around to the other side of the complex.

  He’d recalled the conversation from the diner: how the college pup had told the women that he and his friends were on their way to Lake Havisu. If Joshua was a betting man—and he used to be quite the gambler at the weekly poker runs he’d enjoyed with his neighbors—he would say that the women were off to accompany those college kids there.

  So on this day when he didn’t have anywhere to be, Joshua had found himself heading that way, too. He hoped to high heaven that this didn’t mean he was a menace, but he would take that chance if it meant seeing her again.

  The brunette had actually passed him on the highway once, but she’d acted as if she hadn’t
seen him underneath those cat-eyed sunglasses. Then he’d passed her, and he thought that maybe, just maybe, she recognized him that time.

  Road games, he thought. A most welcome diversion from the reality of his shambles of a life.

  As the brunette drew closer, her dark ponytail swayed as sinuously as her hips. She was dressed in a red-and-white checked sleeveless top and a white tennis skirt—innocent as a fifties siren.

  Just as seductive, too.

  As she came to a stop a few yards away, he tipped his hat to her. She barred her arms over her chest. Uh-oh. No games for her?

  “So we meet again,” he said.

  “What a coincidence.”

  Behind her sunglasses, he imagined her deep blue eyes lasering into him. The heat cut through him, sizzling his skin.

  Okay, maybe she was angry at seeing him here, and being raised by his dearly departed mom as a gentleman—most of the time, at least—he would have to respect that, like it or not.

  “I’ll leave if you’re uncomfortable,” he said. “It’s not my intention to—”

  She’d reached into her purse and extracted some money. Joshua recognized the amount of it.

  “You left something at the motel.” She held the cash toward him. “Needless to say, even if I charged by the hour, this sure wouldn’t be enough.”

  Oh, good Lord. “That was for the lamp, ma’am, nothing more. I didn’t mean to insult.”

  She leveled a low glance at him, edging down her sunglasses so he could see her eyes. There was a spark of glee in their depths, matching the emerging slant of her lips.

  “Didn’t I ask you not to call me ma’am?” she said.

  Joshua wasn’t sure where he stood right now. Yes, physically he was on the blacktop of a parking lot that he shouldn’t have even dared set foot on, but he meant figuratively.

  Was she just being saucy?

  Was she…flirting?

  Hope washed over him. The emotion was such a stranger that it took him a moment to identify it. Along with his land, he’d been robbed of that particular valuable, as well.

  Yet, somehow, this woman managed to bring it back.

  He grasped on to that hope before it was taken, too. “If I don’t call you ma’am, what am I supposed to use?”

  “Certainly not something that sounds like a bordello madam.” She flapped the money, signaling that he should take the stuff.

  He refused by holding up a calm hand. “I don’t live under any debts, miss. You keep it.”

  “Miss?” She pushed her sunglasses back up, but it couldn’t hide her amused expression. “Okay, miss will do. It’s way better than ma’am. But, all the same, I can’t accept your cash.”

  It was only sixty dollars, but it might go a long way on this fool’s journey of his. As it was, he was stretching his wallet, especially after the loss of his family’s property.

  The brunette pushed the money at him again, jutting out her hip. She had no idea what she was playing with here.

  “I won’t take the cash back,” he said flatly.

  She lowered her arm, then tapped the bills against her thigh, staring at him.

  Then she smiled, and he was so taken that he couldn’t help doing the same. How did she manage to make him forget so easily?

  “Seems we’re at an impasse then,” she said.

  “Seems so.”

  “I suppose I’ll have to think of a good way to get rid of this money without actually spending it.”

  “All right, all right, if hanging on to it makes you feel dirty somehow, then—”

  “I wanted dirty,” she interrupted.

  The reminder of last night hit him full force. The muscles lining his belly jerked, escalating a hunger nothing could assuage right now except her.

  “I guess,” she said, taking a step closer, “you just like to feel in control by shelling out the bucks. That’s why you don’t want them back. Am I right?”

  His body went tighter in primitive response. “Everyone wants control in some manner.”

  And maybe leaving that money had been a small way of taking it back when she had made it clear that she was done with him for the night. Lord knew he’d lost enough control with the ranch and then her. If he could just get both of them back…

  “Maybe if you told me your name, I’d be a mite easier to work with,” he said. Her name would mean that he’d at least won a bit of her, and that was a start.

  “Why’s it so important for you to know?” she asked. “Because I’ll tell you something—names have no part of this.”

  He straightened. “This? What’s this?”

  She seemed caught off guard at the question, as if she had no idea how to answer. Then she smiled.

  “This is why you ended up here at Lake Havisu when I doubt it was on your agenda. This is why we’re both standing here when I could be inside drinking beer with my friend while you…I don’t know, brood in your pickup or whatever.”

  Joshua chanced a cocky smile, starting to understand what she wanted from him. “No strings attached, right? You’re a girl on vacation and that’s all you were looking for last night.”

  “And then you showed up here, screwing up my escape plan.”

  Her own cheeky smile told him that he’d walked right into her fantasies.

  Well then. They could stand here all day talking like polite strangers or he could come out with what was obviously on both of their minds.

  “What’re your plans for the day…miss?”

  “What are yours?”

  Yup, cheeky.

  “I had a couple of ideas in mind,” he said.

  He saw how her fingers clutched at her skirt, the only sign that she was hesitating, that maybe she wasn’t as naughty as she came off. That’s when he recalled her sunshine-on-the-horizon smile and how it reminded him so poignantly of home, of what had been broken…

  As his heart ached, he wondered if he even missed more than the stolen land. If his protectiveness of the whole ranch was a sign that his feelings ran deeper than he realized.

  But in the next instant, the brunette was back to raising her chin and giving him a saucy look, and he wasn’t sure what the hell was what.

  She emphatically took her phone from her purse then dialed and held it to her ear.

  “Hey, Carm, it’s me,” she said, gazing at him all the while, setting him on sexual edge. “Something’s come up, and it’s wearing a cowboy hat. Yes, yes, but would it be okay if I met you in…”

  Vision going passion-bleary, he held up two fingers. It was going to take at least a couple of hours to make up for all the sleep he’d lost over her last night.

  Her lips parted at the number he suggested. Then she recovered, cool as ever. “Are you sure you’re okay with this?”

  After a pause, she laughed at whatever her friend said in return. “Right. Then have fun, and we’ll keep in touch. Bye.”

  Slowly, she folded her phone and put it away. Then she glanced at the cash she still held in her hand.

  “I have a proposition,” she said.

  Joshua’s body was already revving, a machine set into motion at the carnal images roaring through his brain. Flesh memories of her long legs under his palms, his fingers slipping between her sex…

  “Name it,” he said.

  She nodded toward his truck. “How roomy is it in there?”

  He opened his door. “Roomy enough.”

  “Okay.” She sidled toward him, wedging the bills between her index and middle fingers. “I’m going to give you a shot at getting what you want.”

  Lust planked him. “Your body?”

  “If you’re lucky. I’m talking about something else. Something you’ve asked me for a few times now.”

  Her name?

  “I’m guessing,” he said, leaning closer to her until his words rustled the fine, stray hairs near her ear, “that I’m going to have to work to know who you are.”

  She shuddered, and he put his hand on the small of her back, unwilling
to wait any longer to touch her. The contact seared his palm, marking him.

  “You catch on quick.” She turned her head slightly, lowering her voice. “Every guess you make about my name gets you a prize. However, if you don’t get it right before my clothes are off, you’re out of luck.”

  “Wait, there’re a million names out there.”

  “I don’t think you’ll mind playing though.” She rested a hand on his chest, and his heartbeat tripled in time. “Take your first guess now.”

  His breathing went shallow. She was tart yet sweet beneath it all. She was hot yet cool. An enigma. What kind of name would she have?

  He had no idea, so he threw one out there. “Based on blue eyes, dark hair and paradoxes alone, I’ll say Angelina.”

  “Ooooo, an angel’s name for the media’s most questionably devilish woman.” She took off her sunglasses and slid them into her purse. “But…wrong. Although I do appreciate the thought.”

  Her electric-blue eyes bore into him and he couldn’t stop himself from pressing her against his hardening groin.

  Sucking in a breath, she paused, as if overcome.

  “Why do we need all these games?” he asked, voice gritty.

  But she ignored him. “Guess again, cowboy.”

  Damn her. “Jennifer.”

  Now he was being an impatient smart-ass.

  Casually, maddeningly, she reached around to her ponytail and eased off the band that was holding it, then put that away, too.

  As her wavy dark hair tumbled free, his penis strained against his jeans. Against her.

  “I get it,” he said. “For every wrong answer…”

  “You get more of a peek. You really can’t lose unless you win by guessing my name.”

  Yeah, like getting her naked could ever be considered a loss. The thought of her bare and beautiful urged him to take her by the waist and hoist her into his truck, where she scooted back across the vinyl seats, past the long stick shift and to her side of the cab. There, she manually rolled down the window partway.

  “Truly roomy,” she said, peering around. “Clean…And it smells like pine air freshener.”

  He got into the truck, slamming the door. He’d parked in a less frequented area of the lot, but there were still people coming to and from their cars. He and his miss would have to be quiet and discreet.